Epedia relies on players inputting their own personal experience and most of the prolific editors probably aren't running characters at sand sprite level. Feel free to edit caps if your experience gain doesn't mirror the ranks posted. Keep in mind most ranks aren't posted with buffs or Khri in consideration.

For your character, try removing pieces of armor to successfully hide. You probably won't gain much skill (and you run the risk of getting beat up) but you'll have more success.

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The standard battery of questions:
-burden?
-wounds?
-is your bonus tanked? ("smirk <your character name>" while out of hiding or just "smirk" while in hiding to check it)
-if you debuff their perception with ambush screen how much effect (if any) do you see, in terms of being better able to hide?

<< Feel free to edit caps if your experience gain doesn't mirror the ranks posted.

<< Evasion soft caps around 73.
<< Hiding soft caps around 75.

This indeed looks highly doubtful. To my knowledge soft caps were essentially removed in 3.1 and the fact that it's called hiding not stealth all points to outdated information. Although with all things considered i don't think your issue is with stealth caps. Don't edit until you're doing it right yourself.

The thing with stealth is that it's not as straight forward as you might think. Backstabbing is probably the worst way to train stealth. It's already by nature couteractive to training because you kill everything too fast. More importantly, backstab doesn't count as a exp timer resetter.

What you need to do is pick a balance neutral or positive move like feint and target a body part from stealth.

People will argue but more or less in this order from easiest to hardest (find the hardest one that consistently gets you "masterfully position" message):
["right leg", "back", "right arm", "right hand", "abdomen", "chest", "neck", "head", "right eye"]

:: hide (stalk) > feint sprite right eye > repeat

Every time you do this your exp timer is reset and you are able to learn stealth.

<< Soft caps are still absolutely a thing.

I don't know what to say. As someone who used to abuse soft caps to the max until 3.1 and i actually have a few weapons in a certain cap range right now, there definitely is no soft caps that i can distinguish. Maybe we have completely different understanding of what a soft cap is and just to clear i don't consider exp slowing down in the end a soft cap at any point.

The problem with soft caps is that "learning slows down a ton" is completely subjective. I'm not sure that a "soft cap" actually exists as much as mobs spawn within a range, so sometimes you will have mobs on the low end of the range which won't teach as well as mobs on the high end, so it seems like you're in a "soft cap" situation.

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>>The problem with soft caps is that "learning slows down a ton" is completely subjective.

That and sometimes even a slow trickle of experience per action ads up when those actions are done quick enough (like when doing AoE that all give separate exp ticks, or when 4 mobs are attacking you at once training your defenses, etc), but I can generally tell when something is in the realm of soft caps.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

My experience is that at high ranks, at least, soft caps still exist. Right after 3.1 was released I started hunting young wyverns with high 800s in Evasion. Once it ticked over to 901 it would never move off of 1/34 even dancing with 4 for hours. It stayed that way till 960s when I finally had the weapons/other defenses to move on to juvies.

My guess is that when learning ranges were decreased that sitting at 1/34 for many ranks disappeared below ~500 ranks, but the critters beyond that level still have such a huge teaching range that soft caps are still possible.

I've brought a thief up through the ranks more recently than most on here. Stealth is going to be difficult for you to train in combat for awhile. It's a combination of your buffs not being very effective yet, and all of your armor hindrance. Also, I believe sprites are one of those critters that are super perceptive, plus you probably constantly have 4 on you which makes it even worse. Simu tries to have the stealth more RP'ish where certain critters have better perception while others have worse, but really it just needs dumbed down (ie stealth 20 ranks higher than evasion training or something) to make things simpler.

I struggled a lot with stealth even when I was into snow goblins. It's also why I never mixed armors even though I wanted to. I could hardly hide in full light armor. One thing I did even up until 3rd tier snow goblins was to remove my torso armor. It sounds dangerous but if you are backstabbing you should be getting quick enough kills that you won't be overwhelmed when you pop out of hiding.

No idea really, but from my perspective low level stealth was way out of whack. Now that I am at ~500 stealth, it is pure easy mode.

<I struggled a lot with stealth even when I was into snow goblins. It's also why I never mixed armors even though I wanted to. I could hardly hide in full light armor. One thing I did even up until 3rd tier snow goblins was to remove my torso armor. It sounds dangerous but if you are backstabbing you should be getting quick enough kills that you won't be overwhelmed when you pop out of hiding.

Odd I've just recently (last 5-6 months) leveled a thief up to mid 80's without really a single stealth issue. I held off training plate till I had around 100 ranks in other armors, but have always used a multi armor setup, 3 pieces till I started up plate.