Sneaking | Divinity Original Sin 2 Wiki

Sneaking
Sneaking determines how well you can sneak without getting caught.
Increasing this ability shrinks NPC sight cones and improves your movement speed while sneaking.

Sneaking is a civil ability in Divinity Orginal Sin 2. Sneaking determines how well you can sneak without getting caught.

Sneaking Information

A higher sneaking ability improves your movement speed while sneaking and shrinks NPC sight cones.

• Default Key: [ C ] to enter/exit sneaking
• Default Key: [ LShift ] to view NPC sight cones*
• If you have 1 or more levels in Thievery, Sneak mode will also allow you to Pickpocket NPCs.
• Sneaking levies a movement penalty of 30%. Default movement is 5.0m per AP, therefore lvl 0 sneaking is 3.5m per AP.
• Lvl 0 --   -30% movement while sneaking    ( base 3.5 per AP ), sight cones approx 90 degrees (default)
• Lvl 1 --   -24% movement while sneaking    ( base 3.8 per AP ), and sight cones decreased
• Lvl 2 --   -18% movement while sneaking    ( base 4.1 per AP ), and sight cones decreased
• Lvl 3 --   -12% movement while sneaking    ( base 4.4 per AP ), and sight cones decreased (approx 50 degrees)
• Lvl 4 --    -6% movement while sneaking     ( base 4.7 per AP ), and sight cones decreased
• Lvl 5 --    -0% movement while sneaking     ( base 5.0 per AP ), and sight cones decreased
• *sight cones will always show as the default ~90 degrees unless the character is currently sneaking

Sneaking Notes

• Sneaking is cancelled immediately if the player enters an NPC's active sight cone. Seems to ignore non-hostile animals. 
• The degrees to which sight cones are reduced to are only approximations.
• NPC sight distance is unaffected. Only affects the vision "cones" in which they will notice a sneaking player.
• Sneaking costs 4 AP in a fight, and 0 AP to cancel. Note that the Guerilla Talent, as of the Definitive Edition, now also reduces the cost of Sneak by 1 AP to 3 AP.
• Because characters that join a fight "late" are put at the back of the turn order for that round, if a character is sneaking while another of your characters starts a fight, it is extremely likely that they will end up at the back of the turn order (for that round).
• The above happens because one of the following will occur: either the sneaking character gets revealed by an NPC turning toward one of your other characters as soon as the fight begins (this counts as them "joining late"), OR, the sneaking character stays sneaking while the rest of the party fights, and is placed at the back of the round's turn order as soon as they attack or reveal themselves (or otherwise willingly enter the fight).
• Movement speed penalties in the game seem to be additive, or at least for sneaking + slows and sneaking + overencumbered. For example, lvl 0 sneaking + oil leads to 80% slow (50% + 30%), and lvl 3 sneaking + oil leads to 62% slow (50% + 12%).
• Sneaking can be used tactically to get optimal positioning before a fight begins. It can also be beneficial to start a fight with one of your characters while the rest of the party sneaks into position while the enemies all stand still. This does come at the cost of having them act last in the round once they join the fight, and having your one fight-starter get focused, but at least the rest of your roster will have "perfect positioning" and won't be attacked/debuffed/targeted that round.
• Some actions that consume AP will not break sneaking. These include: switching weapons, looting/dropping items, moving an object, lockpicking.... (add more if more are found).