Skill · Thief level 9 · (critical) (21% per practice)
Speed: very slow
Usagebstab <character>backstab <character>
Backstab is a thief skill where you sneak up on your opponent and stab them in the back with a dagger or other piercing weapon. After backstabbing, the attacker is lagged for a short time.
Note that backstab is not totally effective on many creatures. Skeletal and crystalline creatures are nearly immune, while creatures that are injured are generally much more aware and harder to sneak up on.
Dexterity will help you to make your backstab more often, and low dexterity can hinder your backstab considerably.
Only one-handed weapons with a purely penetrating damage type, such as pierce, stab or sting, can be used for backstabbing.
Backstab is not equally effective against all targets: creatures at 30–90% HP are more alert and harder to stab, while those at 0–29% or 91–100% HP are far easier. In PK, injured targets (30–90% HP) have roughly a 50% chance of being successfully backstabbed, versus about 6% for mobs.
Things that affect stabs
- Dexterity: High dexterity will help you to make your backstab land more often, and low dexterity can hinder your backstab considerably.
- Thief skill level: increases the damage multiplier of your backstab. A higher damage multiplier, as a side note, does not increase or decrease the chance of landing a freak backstab.
- Damroll: increases the initial damage of a successful stab.
- Weapon speed: a weapon with a faster speed will recover from backstabbing far more quickly than a slower one. This is very important as backstab lag causes a player to take a lot of damage.
- Hiding: will slightly increase backstab damage, though be aware that you will instantly be revealed once the stab is initiated.
Avoiding backstabs
There is no surefire way to avoid backstabs however it may be possible to reduce the chances of been hit and the damage impact by:-
Freak backstab
Some of the most exciting moments in the life of a backstabber is when he or she gets a freak stab. Freak stabs take the damage that would normally have been dealt, and multiply it by a random power of 2 between 1 and 7. Any backstab multiplied by 8 or higher will be broadcast to the entire mud. Freak stabs on the higher end of the scale (32) are fairly rare, while freak 8 and freak 16 happen once or twice a day. For stabs above freak 32, the lucky thief will receive a practice. For any freak stab, he will also gain a higher-than-normal amount of xp.
Many previous freak backstabs can be seen on board 10, the hall of trophies.
See also
