Thief/Guide

Thieves gameplay is not quite as straightforward as a Mages or Warriors who go into battle and simply throw fireballs or lunge at their enemy. A Thief sometimes needs a little more setup or planning before combat.

Gameplay

While a Warrior is a slab of health points, heavy weapons, and high armor allowing them to win the war of attrition, a Thief is much more suited to a risk/reward style of play. A Thief's abilities generally do extremely high damage with the possibility of even killing enemies in a single hit with the downside being they will be slow to defend themselves afterwards. Though Dodge helps keep a Thief from being smashed to bits they naturally will have less health and armor than a warrior.

What a thief lacks in mettle they more than make up for in guile. Thieves have a mountain of skills that provide utility outside of combat:

• Brewing poisons to apply to their weapons and antidotes to cure them
• Pickpocket, shoplift, and steal which provides extra gold income and all but removes the need to purchase from NPC shops
• Lockpicking to bypass doors that you would otherwise need the key for or may only be bypassed with lockpicking. Note: all classes can pick locks but it takes substantially longer without the skills of a Thief
• Stealth abilities to move through areas entirely unnoticed by aggressive enemies
• Grenades... enough said
• Shadow skills to bind enemies in place, walk through the shadows, and conjure decoys to take hits for them

Combat

A new Thief will start out with three skills already learned: Dodge, Trip, and Bloodletting Stab.

Starting at level 1:

• Use Bloodletting Stab at the start of the fight to give the skill's bleed damage the most time to roll
  • Note: While it's possible to use Bloodletting Stab multiple times in a row the bleed does not stack and the enemy will quickly catch onto you and start avoiding your subsequent attempts
• Use Trip for extra damage
  • Note: Trip is incredibly useful while in a group as your teammates will have extra opportunities to hit the target while it's down. However, Trip is less useful when solo as the enemy will generally stand up before you've recovered from the lag the skill applies to you. With that said at this level you don't have many other options.
  • Tip: At low levels thief weapons are generally pointed; these are particularly ineffective against skeleton enemies of which there are many in the lower level areas. Use Trip to deal more consistent damage to these enemies until you can find a blunt weapon

Equipment & Itemization

Thief equipment is easy to spot as it frequently (though not necessarily) has Damroll, Dexterity, and Thief Skill Level all at once. Occasionally a thief item will also increase Hitroll, Charisma, Strength, or Constitution. An example of a Thief item would be the following lowbie neck item:

a rat shaped medallion

Artifact armor

NECK

1 Armor Class

• ◆ +1 Thief Skill Level
• ◆ +1 hitroll
• ◆ +1 damroll
• ◆ +1 Dexterity

Requires Level 19 Thief

Keywords: rat black medallion chain metal

Backstab Weapons

When using the Backstab skill picking the right weapon is critical. It must be a pointed weapon meaning one of: pierce, stab, sting, gore, or bite. A weapon meant for backstabbing is generally spotted by its stats which will be one of the aforementioned damage types, it will have high Damroll with little or no Hitroll, and usually includes Thief Skill Level. The weapon (perhaps obviously) also cannot have the NO_BACKSTAB flag which means the weapon cannot be used for backstab, though this flag is usually found on Warrior weapons with pointed damage types rather than Thief weapons. Note: a good backstabbing weapon generally also makes for a good Crippling Strike weapon due to both skills ignoring the target's Armor.

One of the most iconic backstabbing weapons is The Lost Spear of the Ancients:

the Lost Spear of the Ancients

Artifact Relic

6 to 66stab

very slow Speed

• ◆ +10 damroll
• ◆ +2 Thief Skill Level
• ◆ +1 Dexterity

Account Bound

Requires Level 29

NO_SAC