Message 1164 : A newbies guide to playing thief (Ric) Written on Mon Nov 15 20:10:53 1999 I noticed the last guide was a little outdated so I decided to take it upon myself to make a new guide. This guide will help you make a successful scout. You will notice I use the term scout instead of thief. A thief is someone who takes things which are not his and this guide does not deal with this topic. A scout can be considered an assassin. What a scout does is simple. Try and kill your oppenent with 1 quick thrust of the blade into the back of your unsuspecting target. Scouts are the most feared class in the game simply because you don't know when or where they will strike. The following is only my opinion on how a scout should be played so don't freak on me if you don't agree. Stats Stats are a very important topic. To make a successful scout only 3 prerequisites are required. High dex, low-mid int, low-mid wis. The reason why scouts do not need high int or wis is because they do not have many spells. The other remaining stats are up to you. Str, con, per and wil are very important to a scout. Make sure that each of these stats are not <12 (with the possible exception of wil). If you plan to make a fighter type scout, then give more points towards str and con. If you plan to make your scout with high awareness, then give more points towards per. I always favour a fair ammount of con in my scouts which will enable them to regenerate mps faster. Most scouts opt for a decent ammount of con and str and have per and wil in the mid range. Weapons The weapon choice of a scout is piercing type weapons and missile type weapons. Good piercing type weapons are Sting, black ruined dagger, double edged eket, nasty orkish fang, sharp thorn, and a shortsword. All but the shortsword should be fairly hard to get. The shortsword is not praised by many but it is a weapon which is comparable to the double edged eket and is quite easy to get. Most weapon shops will have a shortsword on hand. Missile type weapons that you should look for are a shortbow, orkish shortbow, embellished longbow, yew longbow. All but the shortbow is fairly hard to get a hold of. Many people use the embellished longbow and yew longbow but they tend to be too slow for me. Shortbow and orkish shortbow are very fast bows and are excellent for killing off mobs solo. You will need a quiver if you decide to use a bow and that quiver should be stocked with arrows. Good arrows include war arrow, ash arrow, and silver-tipped arrows. Silver-tipped arrows are very nice arrows but are very rare arrows. Ash arrows are bought in Rivendell (not easy to get to if a newbie) and war arrows are bought in Fornost (very easy to get to). You should opt to get war arrows since they are fairly good and are easy to get a hold of. Buy alot of them since many of them will break. Thief Skills Basic skills needed to me maxxed to make a successful scout. Sneak, backstab, wilderness and dodge. Having those 3 skills practiced to the max will make you a pretty good stabber. The rest of the skills are up to you. Piercing weapons is very nice to have at a high %. The more you practice this the higher your ob and pb will get. Hide is a useful weapon to get when you are running away from someone chasing you and you are low on mps. Just find a nice room to hide in and regenerate some mps before the person chasing you notices you are hiding. Attack is very good for people using piercing weapons. This skills enables you to attack 2 times in every 1 round of violence. This skill also helps you flee 2 times every round when your autoflee kicks in. The missile skill is good if you want to raise your m_ob. This skill is only good if you use a bow alot of the time. Escape enables you to pick which direction you wish to flee in. Although many people do not get this skill it is still very useful. Steal is a skill most people frown upon. If you decide to get this skill and use it against your fellow players do not be surprised when 1 of them decides to try and get revenge. Pick is a wonderful skill to have. This will enable you to lock and unlock doors which are able to be locked and unlocked. Search is a good skills to practice only once or twice. This will tell you exit names which are hidden. Its excellent for checking out places which few people have been too. Envenom a very deadly skill when paired with a deadly poison. What this skill does is poison your weapon with a poison vial you have in your inventory. If your blade or arrow has poisoned smeared on it, then the target on which your are fighting has a chance of getting poisoned. As you can see many people see this as a very good skill. Warrior Skills Warriors have 2 skills which scouts should be concerned with. The first being parry. High parry will help you with fighting. The higher your parry, the more you can fight harder mobs which in turn means more xp. Endurance is another skill sought out by many scouts. This skill will help your regeneration of hps and mps. It will also increase your overall hps and mps. The more practices you dump into warrior skills, the lower your thief % becomes so be careful when practicing a warrior skill. Cleric Spells Many scouts steer clear of cleric spell but some cleric spells are quite useful even for thieves. Cure light is a good spell for when you injured and no casters are nearby to heal you. Create food is another good spell. With this spell you dont need to carry as much food with you. Carrying less weight will improve your db and will help you use less mps per room. Create water is a good spell for people who are just too lazy to go to a fountain every once in a while. Practicing too much in the clerical category will in turn ruin your scout % and make you less of a scout so be careful when practicing cleric spells. Mage Spells You will need 1 mage spell to make a decent scout. Detect invis is the only spell you will need. Other useful spells include invisibility and create light. Invisibilty will help you get by some nasty monsters who cannot see invisible. Create light is a neat spell that will refresh light sources which have run out of fuel. Not carrying around flasks of oil will help your db and make you use less mps per room. A definite bonus for scouts. Be careful when practicing mage spells. They will ruin your scout %. Ranger Skills Max wilderness and ride. Awareness is a good skill to help prevent people from stabbing you and you can notice people sneaking around better. Leadership is good if you fancy yourself as leading big groups alot of the time. Climb and swim are good utility skills. Climb will help you move into and out of rooms which require climb. Good for hiding from nasties who do not have climb. Swim is very similar to climb for that you can hide in water rooms at times. If you plan to go hunting for trolls, orcs and bns then you will need a fair ammount of track. Max track if you plan to go hunting. The higher the track % is, the faster you will be able to track your victim. he good thing about ranger skills is that they will not harm your scout % so you can practice here all you want. Equipment Get a weapon as discussed earlier. As for armour generally stay away from metal armour unless its shining armour or fine chainmail. These 2 are very rare so in most cases you won't use metal. Leather is a popular choice amongst scouts. The soft leather will improve your ob as well as protect your body from harm. The hard leather will not improve ob but will protect your body considerably. Cloth armour will improve your db. People who pick cloth are generally db freaks who try to keep their carrying weight down as much as possible. Its a good idea to start off with cloth 1st to get a feel on how being a scout is. A good cloak to get is forest green cloak. It has some special quality to it that is very good for scouts as well as giving a fair ammount of db bonus. As for shields, stay away from the heavy metal kind. Large metal wall and tower shield are 2 which come to mind. Instead of these heavy beasts try a gilted round shield or arthedain shield. They are light and give good pb but are fairly hard to get. Misc Tharbad will be the place you want to go and practice thief skills. There are 2 thief guilds in Tharbad. The better of the 2 guilds is hidden deep inside the sewers of the city. Be aware that it is extremely dangerous to try to reach the guild inside the sewers without a good leader. Do not try and learn backstab in the first few levels because the chances of you landing a stab is very low. Even if you do manage to land a stab it will be very little damage. Instead concentrate on defense first. Learn dodge and parry and get detect invis. After you have a fair ammount of defense, its then up to you on to how your character will be shaped. A good idea is to use missile type weapons for the first 10 levels or so. A bow will really increase the ammount of xp you can gain and will help you level faster. If you are making a scout be aware that dwarves make for bad scouts. Elves and hobbits in particular make very good scouts. To make a successful scout you may need to make a few unsuccessful characters before you get it right. Don't be discouraged if things don't go smoothly in the first few levels. Just keep trying and learning. It takes alot of time to figure out how to truely play a scout to its full potential. If you get frusterated or angry that things aren't going you way just try to remember its only a game. Have fun! Ric the master assassin