Morphine's Advice to BG Thieves July 14, 1989 for Version 3Q This is a a list of information I've collected from bootstrapping my ctr up to a lvl 13 thief. I've run him as an assassin so this material is rather biased towards magic skill as opposed to thieving skill. My justification for this is fairly straightforward. Anything you can steal from a critter, you can take after killing him. Killing takes longer, but is much safer. Additionally, stealing from PCs is pretty futile because it just means that before you get a chance to build a really good ctr, somebody will kill you. This only leads to frustration for both the thief and his/her victims. BEGINNING A NEW THIEF Starting a thief with nothing is possible. I did it. But, it is not nearly as easy as starting one with some cash on *hand*. Note that I didn't say cash in the bank. As a *new* thief, most of the town knights will be able to see through your hide spell and will kill you before you can make it to the bank and back. My best advice is to have another crt of yours take some cash and drop it somewhere and immediately go and pick it up with your new thief. The woods by the pawn are a good place for this since you can't see stuff lying in them and people rarely burn them off looking for treasure. How much cash should you have? Ideally, you want enough to buy some decent hit points and improve your level enough for a better hide spell. Buying up to level 8 from the Sage is rather inexpensive, but after that it gets rather costly. This will cost 20,000 gold pieces and should give around 53 hit points. Additionally, it will improve your chances of hiding from critters significantly. I would also start out with an additional 8,000 to 10,000 gold pieces for training. The most important training to start with, in my opinion, is magic training. It will improve your chances of hiding and if you're not able to hide from the critter, your chances of stealing or killing him will be significantly reduced. Additionally, thief spells can be very costly. After you train, you should journey down to the basement of the thieve's guild. If you sit inside of the secret door leading to level 2, you will be able to shoot out at the critters while they won't be able to come in. This is great for some easy gold, bow experience, and a place to cast some spells. Just sit there casting spells until you're out of spell points and then shoot the critters down until you build your spell points back up. Two things will speed up this process. The first is a power robe. They cost 7500 gold pieces in the pawn shop, but often can be purchased for less from other players. If I'm on and in Kesmai, you can page me and I'll give you one. (One per player please.) Another useful item is a +3 crossbow. These are fairly common on level 4 of Kesmai and on Axe. Since they're neutrally aligned, other players can't use them. You should be able to find someone on who can get you one at any time. After sitting around casting spells for a bit, go back up and train and see if you can purchase new spells. You gain magic ability according to the cost of the spell in magic points. As a general rule, the higher spells use more magic points and therefore increase your level more quickly. It's therefore advantageous to have a spell even if you're not going to need it later. Continue doing this until you've earned a couple magic levels and then venture out into level 2 of the Kesmai dungeon. Cast spells whenever your spell points build up and go back to train regularly. BUILDING UP YOUR THIEF After you earn 3 or 4 magic levels, you will be able to go into town safely. You will still get shot, but if you run and are careful, you will live. This comes in handy for temporarilly banking spare gold. You won't have too much of this because spell training and spell purchasing will eat up all of what you find. Balm can be purchased at the apothecary, but you probably won't need it. You will be able to find all you need on the critters you kill. Thieves don't get hit often and seem to stun easily. I only carry 2 or 3 balms at a time and have used less than half of a dozen the whole time I've run this thief. Most of the time I've needed a balm, I was killed before I was able to get it out of my sack, open it, and drink it. You will also be able to venture into level 3 of Kesmai now. Be careful here though because some critters will see through your hide spell still. Others won't for a while then suddenly will. My first death came at the hands of four hobgoblins on level 3. I had been filling them with crossbow bolts for 45 minutes (it takes a while to kill anything as a thief) when they suddenly saw me from 2 hexes away. They jumped me and 3 of them scored hits with greatswords. Obviously, the hit points alone came close to doing me in, but the stun guaranteed my death. Be very careful. Once you become a master of water and have purchased your Breathewater spell, the Kesmai trainer won't critique you anymore. He will continue to take your gold and train you (but I'm doubtful of the actual worth of this training). This is the time to journey to Axe. Getting there shouldn't be a problem. Even without a hide spell, the statues should leave you alone. Once you get there, your troubles begin. Be very careful, especially on the 120' level. Rockworms seem to see through a hide spell very well. They can also hit you from a distance and for a lot of points. If you do get hit by one, run and recast your hide spell. If you get hit once by one, you will probably take a second hit trying to escape. Also be careful of gargoyles here. They tend to travel in groups of two or three and like to hide behind corners. If you go around a corner too quickly and land in the adjacent hex or their hex, they will hit you. You have almost as much of a chance of being stunned by a gargoyle hit as blocking it and getting hit by 3 gargoyles usually will mean death. After you've made it to the thieve's guild on 120', you've found a very handy little place. The trainer there will train you in both magic and thievery and will teach you the rest of your spells. There's even a locked door leading to a zoo next to you to practice thieving skill. Just train in both magic and thievery, use up all of your spell points and take out your lockpick and unlock the door over and over until you've built back up your spell points. Do this for a bit, and then train some more. You will eat up a lot of time and gold here, and it's almost as dull as killing draggie, but I'll get to that later. When you need to venture out to get gold from the bank or kill some crits for cash, the entrance to lockpick town is just south of the guild. The path there is usually fairly well stocked with crits and fairly dangerous. When I've got cash in the bank, I like to set a recall ring to the town and another to the guild and just travel back and forth by recalling. Your Featherfall spell will cost you 20,000 gold pieces. Carrying that much gold, you will be very loaded down. This will cause you to fall trying to climb down the pit from the lockpick town. You'll take some damage and more importantly, it will break your hide spell. If you haven't cleaned up the area below, this can be very dangerous. YOUR ADVANCED THIEF After you've become a master of secrets, you've purchased all of your spells, and trained quite a bit in thieving, your pilgrimage to Axe is over. You can return to Kesmai and will be a very powerful thief. At this level, the Kesmai dragon should not be able to see you from two hexes. This means that if you stay in the water next to the wall (if she can't see you, you can't be stunned) two hexes from the platform, you can see her in 6 out of the 8 hexes she waits in. You can safely and easily pick her off with a +3 crossbow in about 40 minutes without taking a single hit. The crypt behind her is usually stocked with 2 ghouls, a couple of wraiths and occassionally a minotaur. If you lose your hide spell and wait in the water, you can take out all of these with your bow in about 20 minutes. Both the crypt and dragon are unable to be hit by magic wands, and magic balls so you don't need to bother. At this level, you are also able to hide from the giant. After clearing out all of the npcs in the area, work on him and a long time later, you'll have killed him. If this sounds great and really easy, don't get too jealous or anxious. With a high level knight you could earn twice as much experience in the same amount of time and with more excitement. Killing the dragon gets a bit dull after your second time. I haven't met Sparkles yet, so I can't tell you anything about her. However, I'm planning on visiting her soon and will update this and post a message in MPGAMES then. Keep an eye open. MISCELLANEOUS TIPS 1. Running a thief seems to be the exact opposite of running any other character. Most of your challenges will be very early in your character's life. The most annoying critters for other professions will be the easiest for you (spellcasting orcs, wights; spectres; shadows; npc thaums, wizards). A simple rule of thumb is that if you can't see them, they can't see you. Because of that, you don't have to worry about being hit by thier spells if you're hiding. Additionally, 99% of the time they will get in your hex or the adjacent one, see you, get scared, drop their staff, and run away. Then, they'll wonder if they *actually* saw you and come back. They'll do this over and over until you kill them. 2. Killing non-spellcasters will take forever. Be patient. The life of a thief after attaining a decent level is pretty tranquil. It consists of finding critters and shooting them over and over until they're dead. You seldom have to move, rarely are seen, and never take a hit. Patience is the key. 3. Travelling with non-thieves will negate many of your hunting advantages while amplifying many of your disadvantages. The best weapon a thief can use is the +3 crossbow. Actually, we can use the +4 greatsword, but we can't hide with it or while it's belted. So, if you want to run a really wimpy fighter, go ahead. If you're travelling with a non-thief your hide spell is of no use to them when it comes to combat. The crits will lock onto them all the same, if you're in the same hex, or adjacent one, your hide spell is of no use to you either. Additionally while fighting, your +3 crossbow is of little use to either of you in comparison to a BBS, greataxe, RAxe, or RHammer. They'll get almost all of the kills and you'll do little to finish off the crits faster to minimize the damage they take. Also, since there is a target for spellcasters, they'll hang out in the background and cast spells at your companion instead of playing hide and seek with you. The biggest help you can be at this time is to take out the spellcasters first while they work on the other critters. Your crossbow will at least disrupt their spells and will finish off wights, spectres and shadows in 1-4 rounds. NPC's will take longer. After these are gone, pull out a fireball or icestorm wand from your belt (common on Kesmai level 4) and help finish off the rest. 4. Thieves are great for helping others. They can easilly retrieve death piles since they can't be seen. They can't use the BBS so yttril is of no use to them. Dragon scales and skull are easy for them to find when they're a higher level. Because of this, it's easy to have a locker full of stuff you either don't need or can't use. You can be a great supplier for other PCs. Since thieves are also usually poor from spell purchasing and training, this can be a mutually advantageous relationship. 5. The life of the thief is BASED upon his/her hide spell. You won't have many hits and will stun much more easily than a knight. (From my experience at least.) Additionally, the weapons you can use are nothing in comparison to the magical lawful ones. Because of this, direct combat will result in your early demise. Hiding is your best defense. Keep that in mind when positioning around critters and taking them on. Don't wield a wand too quickly since it will break your hide and there may be a shadow, spectre, or ghoul in the area. 6. Since you can't use as good of weapons and won't take many hits, your advanced life will get rather routine. Killing anything will take forever. The dragon will take around 40 minutes (I'd like to see a knight spend 40 minutes with the dragon.) A minotaur will take about 8-15 minutes and I've spent half an hour on an already wounded bear. You will gain experience much more slowly than other PCs because of this and will not have as exciting a life. If the hide spell were made less powerful, this would only mean you'd die more often, since you don't take hits well either. Being able to get a better weapon would take care of the time problem, though. Only being able to hit every other round with a +3 weapon is a distinct disadvantage. Most crits are resting while you're nocking an arrow and firing. Your +3 weapon is much less effective than either a BBS, RAxe or RHammer. Having a +3 weapon that could be used on every round would help things a lot. 7. I'm only a level 13 thief. I don't know everything and some of the things I think I know are probably wrong. I've also done little to work on my stealing ability since I started this crt with no gold and had to use all I had on spell training. Other players will have differing opinions about thieves and will be right about many of them. Many topics relating to thieves will be simply a matter of preference. Kelton has also told me that he plans on altering how the effectiveness of the hide spell is determined. He said he doesn't plan to make it less effective, though. When and if I find out more about this and Sparky, I will let you know. If all goes well with Sparky, I'll include a replay in MPGames, if not, I might also. However, if all does go well, after a few visits to Sparky, I'll also go see Mama to find out what she's like now. 8. Be careful and good luck. When I first started, I was over- ambitious and thought I'd work my way up more quickly and build up treasure faster by overextending myself. I was wrong. I spent a lot of time rerolling and building up wimpy characters who would die many times before becoming anything decent. I lost a lot of equipment that more experienced players gave me. I was never able to get to any of the really good stuff since I'd die long before I would get good enough. Take it slow, be careful, don't be afraid to ask for help from others who are playing, download the maps in MPGames, download IoKTerm, download and go through all of the replays in MPGames. This will save you many lives and a lot of time.