A new Thief need advise

[shenron]

Hey guys, I made a thief who is 4x atm; Stealing, Snooping, Stealth, and Hiding.

My goal with my thief is to make the, "Most Profitable" thief that I can possibly make. I would like to ask for you help and suggestions in build template, popular locations, strategy, and macros *if used*. I was thinking about disarm thief, but then I see how efficient it is to have tracking and detecting hiding. I'm pretty unsure on what to do to be very profitable as a thief.

Thank you all for your time and help! I will be looking at this thread very actively.

-Shenron

 

[Strixamaholic]

Healing and disarm

 

[shenron]

Healing and disarm

Thanks for the feedback man!

I was considering those as well. Is there a specific macro that you run that you implement in your playstyle?

 

[Keltonator]

"Most profitable" is going to depend on what type of thievery you decide to partake in. There's bank thieves, dungeon thieves, champ thieves, vendor thieves. All different sorts and different things to consider in order to tailor your template to fit your play style. Is survivability going to be an issue? Defensive or offensive capability desirable? Weigh your options heavily, sir. Making the wrong choice could mean the difference between making the grab on the ever-sought 120 taming ps, or a mere fencing ss.

Also, auto-steal scrips and macros are for wimps.

 

[shenron]

"Most profitable" is going to depend on what type of thievery you decide to partake in. There's bank thieves, dungeon thieves, champ thieves, vendor thieves. All different sorts and different things to consider in order to tailor your template to fit your play style. Is survivability going to be an issue? Defensive or offensive capability desirable? Weigh your options heavily, sir. Making the wrong choice could mean the difference between making the grab on the ever-sought 120 taming ps, or a mere fencing ss.

Also, auto-steal scrips and macros are for wimps.

Very true sir!

In your opinion, what template and stragety, such as; dungeon; bank, would you recommend? I'm very interested in what you think.

 

[Ariakan99]

I made a pure disarm/stun thief with healing but found it too limiting for travel/survival and a general lack of targets as I do not play during peak times. I am in the process of altering my template to:

Steal/Snoop/Hide/Stealth/Mage/Med/Lockpicking

This template will give me some defensive capability and also allow me to rapidly trawl through dungeons and champ spawns looking for targets - lockpicking serves the purpose of having a character that can open paragon chests and also gives me something to do when no targets are around.

 

[FingersFinn]

As everyone noted above, it depends on what you want to accomplish and really what defense issues you want to try and put a bandaid over (most every thief is squishy as hell). Every standard thief will of course have stealing/snooping/hiding/stealth. If you bring stealth to 80 and forgo GM then you have 320 points left over (if you choose to use no armor-although you can always dress/undress so this isn't an issue, really). If you take tracking make it 220. Don't bother with detect hidden as I've been informed on more than several occasions that it sucks (I was going to train it myself). Reveal is much better, so you may want to consider magery. If you did the following setup you could have some utility and a bit of survivability: tracking/hiding/stealing/stealth/snoop/magery/med (mage/thief).

It comes down to what you want to accomplish in your travels. You could always do thief x3 and throw in fencing/anat/tactics/healing (dropping stealth), having more of a fighter/thief setup. I myself have 2 thieves; one is a stun/thief and the other is my "screw-around" thief that is thief x4 with cooking, begging and tracking (for some light RP--he's a hobo through and through).

Lastly, your "profitability" margin will entirely depend on how skilled and patient you are as a thief. Sometimes you may get lucky and have a great day. Other times you may not net much. Patience is the name of the game. If you don't have that, you are already going to do poorly as a thief

Practice and stick to you guns.

 

[Keltonator]

I'm constantly changing my template it seems, trying to find the perfect balance of survivability, defense, and capability as a thief. I was running a stun thief for a while (4x standard thief skills, plus anat/wrestling/healing) to stun punch and try to get away if necessary. Currently switching to magery/med/detect hidden. While detect isn't as great as it should be, having spent 100 points on it, I find that as long as you know exactly where your target is standing it works fairly well (which is why it could be coupled well with tracking also).
As far as strategy? Thievery is really a game of opportunity; it's all about being in the right place at the right time. You'll need to learn to pick targets based on who you think will be holding the most obtainable value in their pack. Bank thieves, as much as they re despised by the community as a whole can actually turn quite a profit, under the right circumstances. Someone recalling in and immediately banking may have just coma back from a hunt, so the key is to get to them before they have a chance to stash that ss you want. While, on he other hand, most people sitting around there afk are usually smart enough not to keep anything on them, other than a few regs maybe. Look for the signs that suggest someone has something valuable. Dungeon stalking can work too, if you're willing to take that chance. There are lots of casting mobs that can reveal you, and most players that have reason to suspect you are a thief don't have a problem flagging criminal to kill you, as they know you can't give them murder counts (being in the thieves guild), and it rids them if the possibility of having their shit stolen. Find something you're comfortable with.

 

[FingersFinn]

Lastly, there is a reason you see people running around naked, especially at WBB.. They are thieves. Holding and wearing nothing means losing nothing when the inevitable guard whacking occurs. It's part of the reason I even gave up magery a while ago--to not have to restock regs when I die; I simply carry fully charged runebooks to get around. The utility with magery is nice, but as mentioned with so much of your template invested in being a thief, your survivability suffers regardless. With no armor, wrestling, res spells or weapon skills, your death is always guaranteed unless you can lose your victim. Good thieves can do just that. This is the sole reason I vied for the stun-thief build opposed to a disarm thief or uoforever. Wear newbied clothes and take out the "nice" clothing when not actively looking for marks.

As a side note, I was farming in Wrong weeks ago on my bard mage and a thief was following me. He appeared and hid again as he shoved through me. I tracked him and watched as he got closer to an ogre lord paragon I had provod onto other mobs. My trapped pouch went off as he was trying to snoop it. I moved away and re-trapped. The ogre lord para was low on life and the thief got closer, anticipating the loot it would drop. Unfortunately for the thief, I cast reveal on him as he was about on top of the paragon. No sooner was he revealed that he died instantly. It was the fastest death I'd ever seen. I didn't even see the ogre para hit him. He popped out from hiding and straight into death. An explo/ebolt finished off the para and I got my loot.

When a thief dies that is not me, I find it endlessly amusing.

 

[shenron]

As everyone noted above, it depends on what you want to accomplish and really what defense issues you want to try and put a bandaid over (most every thief is squishy as hell). Every standard thief will of course have stealing/snooping/hiding/stealth. If you bring stealth to 80 and forgo GM then you have 320 points left over (if you choose to use no armor-although you can always dress/undress so this isn't an issue, really). If you take tracking make it 220. Don't bother with detect hidden as I've been informed on more than several occasions that it sucks (I was going to train it myself). Reveal is much better, so you may want to consider magery. If you did the following setup you could have some utility and a bit of survivability: tracking/hiding/stealing/stealth/snoop/magery/med (mage/thief).

It comes down to what you want to accomplish in your travels. You could always do thief x3 and throw in fencing/anat/tactics/healing (dropping stealth), having more of a fighter/thief setup. I myself have 2 thieves; one is a stun/thief and the other is my "screw-around" thief that is thief x4 with cooking, begging and tracking (for some light RP--he's a hobo through and through).

Lastly, your "profitability" margin will entirely depend on how skilled and patient you are as a thief. Sometimes you may get lucky and have a great day. Other times you may not net much. Patience is the name of the game. If you don't have that, you are already going to do poorly as a thief

Practice and stick to you guns.

Wow! this was great! I was for sure thinking about adding tracking into my arsenal because it helps to get some sort of clue as you're running or stealth walking through dungeons where people might be, besides looking at the obvious fresh monster corpses trail. And for sure the mage setup will help to survive some.

Thank you all for your input in strategy and templates, as I appreciate the time you guys took to give a well thought out advise, as it helped me reach a decision on what I'm going to do. : )

 

[FingersFinn]

If you do go mage/thief, I would strongly recommend keeping minimum regs on you. You will die, make no mistake. Regs can get expensive fast if you make it a habit of rolling everywhere with 50 each at a time. Also keep in mind that being in the thieves guild, you cannot kill another player without being temporarily removed.. meaning no stealing for a time (I can't remember but it may be 24 or 48 hours). You also cannot give murder counts so if you become a known thief people won't hesitate to kill you outside of town, even if you aren't out thieving. It's happened to me before.. folks attempting to kill me, that is. It's why I roll with stun thief. Added bonus with wrestling is 50% dodge chance. Still can get shredded quick though in melee and no magic resistance.

 

[shenron]

If you do go mage/thief, I would strongly recommend keeping minimum regs on you. You will die, make no mistake. Regs can get expensive fast if you make it a habit of rolling everywhere with 50 each at a time. Also keep in mind that being in the thieves guild, you cannot kill another player without being temporarily removed.. meaning no stealing for a time (I can't remember but it may be 24 or 48 hours). You also cannot give murder counts so if you become a known thief people won't hesitate to kill you outside of town, even if you aren't out thieving. It's happened to me before.. folks attempting to kill me, that is. It's why I roll with stun thief. Added bonus with wrestling is 50% dodge chance. Still can get shredded quick though in melee and no magic resistance.

Well put sir. On your stun thief, what do your ( Str / Dex / Int ) stats look like?

 

[FingersFinn]

100/90/35

 

[SidX]

Just a note about Reveal vs. Detect Hidden... For a thief I would imagine you'd almost always want to be as stealthy as possible. Reveal means you have to show yourself to cast and carry regs. Detect Hidden can be used while you're hidden and requires zero regs or mana. It is much more useful for a thief in my opinion than Reveal. You can walk around champ spawns in Stealth mode just detecting hidden all over the place, revealing anyone who may be hiding and snoop/steal from them quicker than they can say "Vas Ort Flam".

 

[FingersFinn]

Just a note about Reveal vs. Detect Hidden... For a thief I would imagine you'd almost always want to be as stealthy as possible. Reveal means you have to show yourself to cast and carry regs. Detect Hidden can be used while you're hidden and requires zero regs or mana. It is much more useful for a thief in my opinion than Reveal. You can walk around champ spawns in Stealth mode just detecting hidden all over the place, revealing anyone who may be hiding and snoop/steal from them quicker than they can say "Vas Ort Flam".

And I can agree completely with what you are saying. However, I would rather have more utility with all magery has to offer than gming a skill that is sub-par at best. It's going to be a matter of preference in the end.

I choose to use neither and stun for a getaway.

 

[Bunnky]

I use detect on my thief-griefer thief. It's mind-numbingly annoying, and it's a good way to get rid of a lurker. It's also a good laugh to stalk other thieves, revealing them in crucial moments, or straight stealing what they just stole. The only downside is survivability.

 

[Dellan]

There are two schools of thief: Fighter thief aka thug, and stealther thief. So, decide...

Do you want a pvp template to steal their heals and kill 'em? Go mage/dex 5x with steal/snoop. That's my fav lately, had enough of "I can't fight back so I must run" mentality.

Do you want to sneak around, aiming for best item, then grab it and run like hell? You will never go wrong with classic slippery build - steal, snoop, hide, stealth, wrestle, magery, resist. As for magery.. Way I see it it's a must for professional stealther. Feef must always have some sort of healing, be it bandage or magical means, but magery provides many interesting tools for the job, which I won't disclose

There is a zillion of combinations of skills for thief, and believe me, I had them all. Can't remember how many times I reworked my skills in search of something that performs bit more than previous templates... These are best:

Tracking - helps a ton with finding new marks. This can help ya find some hidden people that think they're safe, both in towns and outside.

Detect Hidden - yea, it doesn't perform that well, even on GM you have to use it multiple times sometime to find people with hiding, otherwise you need just 50 or so to reveal invis'ed people on first try. But still, it's best pk skill ever for stealther, ahahaha, had my fun with that, like revealing some invised red who hid in the middle of crystal eles in shame.

Stun or Disarm - enough was said.

These are probably best.. Provo is somewhat fun, managed to kill some tamer with werewolf (they are sickeningly dangerous), had inscript once on my stealther too, helps a bit but you sacrifice that wrestling.. Eval for sucker punches but that's just it, meditation yea that helps a lot.. Hmmmm. Reminds me.. Don't try to make a stealther that can fight back. It's impossible, unless you plan to mindblast unbalanced dexxers. It is not possible, believe me I tried hundreds of times. Either go full fighter or full stealther, hybrids never work in this career. There are of course some interesting variations, but they're more or less spinoffs of main two classes.

Good huntin', and please have more class than naked bank thieves, they ruin our reputation

 

[CVegas]

If you do go mage/thief, I would strongly recommend keeping minimum regs on you. You will die, make no mistake. Regs can get expensive fast if you make it a habit of rolling everywhere with 50 each at a time. Also keep in mind that being in the thieves guild, you cannot kill another player without being temporarily removed.. meaning no stealing for a time (I can't remember but it may be 24 or 48 hours). You also cannot give murder counts so if you become a known thief people won't hesitate to kill you outside of town, even if you aren't out thieving. It's happened to me before.. folks attempting to kill me, that is. It's why I roll with stun thief. Added bonus with wrestling is 50% dodge chance. Still can get shredded quick though in melee and no magic resistance.

50% dodge is with GM?

 

[Dellan]

50% dodge is with GM?

It's always skill to skill compared, so if your opponent has 0 weapon skill he will hit you once in a blue moon, if he has GM like you then it will be 50% chance. So if he has GM and you have 0... you're dead.

Btw regarding what Fingers said, I roll with 20-30 regs on me and veeeeeery rarely die. If you're good, you won't die at all. Go with some regs, stam pots and parapouches and no one will catch you. You can stay days being perma and steal some more, unless you operate in towns where it is bit more risky.

 

[FingersFinn]

There are two schools of thief: Fighter thief aka thug, and stealther thief. So, decide...

Do you want a pvp template to steal their heals and kill 'em? Go mage/dex 5x with steal/snoop. That's my fav lately, had enough of "I can't fight back so I must run" mentality.

Do you want to sneak around, aiming for best item, then grab it and run like hell? You will never go wrong with classic slippery build - steal, snoop, hide, stealth, wrestle, magery, resist. As for magery.. Way I see it it's a must for professional stealther. Feef must always have some sort of healing, be it bandage or magical means, but magery provides many interesting tools for the job, which I won't disclose

There is a zillion of combinations of skills for thief, and believe me, I had them all. Can't remember how many times I reworked my skills in search of something that performs bit more than previous templates... These are best:

Tracking - helps a ton with finding new marks. This can help ya find some hidden people that think they're safe, both in towns and outside.

Detect Hidden - yea, it doesn't perform that well, even on GM you have to use it multiple times sometime to find people with hiding, otherwise you need just 50 or so to reveal invis'ed people on first try. But still, it's best pk skill ever for stealther, ahahaha, had my fun with that, like revealing some invised red who hid in the middle of crystal eles in shame.

Stun or Disarm - enough was said.

These are probably best.. Provo is somewhat fun, managed to kill some tamer with werewolf (they are sickeningly dangerous), had inscript once on my stealther too, helps a bit but you sacrifice that wrestling.. Eval for sucker punches but that's just it, meditation yea that helps a lot.. Hmmmm. Reminds me.. Don't try to make a stealther that can fight back. It's impossible, unless you plan to mindblast unbalanced dexxers. It is not possible, believe me I tried hundreds of times. Either go full fighter or full stealther, hybrids never work in this career. There are of course some interesting variations, but they're more or less spinoffs of main two classes.

Good huntin', and please have more class than naked bank thieves, they ruin our reputation

Wow, you know I never even thought of a provo/thief. It gets around the whole "can't kill others" shtick concerning the thieves guild. Kind of interesting.