Thief new player guide

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This is a page for the Thief specific page for the Newbie Help Guide. Whenever possible, overlap with the general guide should be minimized.

Note: This guide should strive to minimize the amount of spoilers it contains. While the general mechanical information is not a problem, guild locations, methods of entry, and any quest should be described in the most general sense. The purpose of this guide it to enlighten a brand new person, not spoil the mystery.

For details, rules, and the other pages involved, see Category:Newbie Guide Contest.

Start

Getting Started

Let's just say this now: If you don't know how to join the guild, you won't be learning how to do it here.

But if you have already joined, congratulations! You're on your way to taking your first steps into becoming a true Thief of Elanthia. Granted, you may not exactly know what it is we do or what being a Thief means, it's the purpose of this little guide to help you figure that out. So, without any further ado, read on and maybe learn a bit about what you've gotten yourself into.

Crossing

There is a guild hall in the Crossing once again! It is being kept a better secret this time around though. It still has an entrance into the hall that newcomers are able to enter through, if you can find it. There is also a man on the street that will let you join and even circle a few times before he directs you to the Guild leader in the guild hall.

There are several different ways to enter in the guildhall in this city. Once you learn of them, you'll realize that you don't always have to walk in the front door.

Riverhaven

There is a test within Riverhaven to aid in joining the guild. You just need to know who to steal from to start the test, and you can't be affiliated with any guilds, but completion of this test only directs you to whom to talk to in Crossing. Heading over to Crossing may be a far better use of your time.

To travel to Crossing from Riverhaven, you need to find the ferries that come to the dock's of Riverhaven, use one to get to the other side of Faldesu River. Then join the Carriage that intermittently arrives at the North Road dock area. This will bring your to the area right outside Crossings' Northeast gate. Elanthipedia has some maps that may be able to help you with finding the way. https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Ranik_Maps

There is no single guild hall in this city, instead there are a series of boltholes scattered across the city that the co-leaders, Swan and Crow, move between. During first steps as a Thief in this city, you might find yourself checking every one of the boltholes to find them. However, after you get some circles under your belt, you'll be able to use our CONTACT command to locate the correct one.

Survival Skills

Similar to Rangers and Necromancers, we're survivalists at heart. This means that most of your time in the world will be spent working on those skills which will help you survive all the obstacles you will face within it and furthermore, that it will be easiest to train these skills when compared with skills from other skill groups, such as weapons. From the very start you will be required to train eight survival skills to varying degrees, though the choice is upon you as to which those will be. Scouting and Thanatology cannot be trained by thieves, as they are exclusive to Rangers and Necromancers respectively. Despite having this minor amount of freedom, there are two skills which you must train: Stealth and Thievery. These may count towards the eight required survival skills and the required ranks per circle are lower or match all but the lowest survival skill requirement.

We'll glaze over some skills here and go more in-depth on the major ones afterwards.

  • Evasion - Simply put, evasion is the skill which determines how well you avoid attacks. Aside from classes in the subject, the only way to learn is to get out there and use it within combat settings.
  • Athletics - The main use of the Athletics skill is to overcome natural obstacles, such as climbing a tree or swimming across a river. Consult the athletics page for a list of places to climb and swim. Be careful not to wander into dangerous areas while exploring.
  • Perception - Perception mainly affects a character's ability to detect things that are hidden. This may be other characters, creatures, hidden paths, and more. There are several ways to train perception:
    • Collecting rocks is the most common outdoors method to learn perception, while collecting torn cloth inside is helpful. Collecting is done with the COLLECT verb. Remember to KICK the piles after they are collected to avoid clutter. It will also teach the Outdoorsmanship skill. It may require a few ranks in outdoorsmanship before you can COLLECT anything.
    • The HUNT verb may be used while hunting to train perception. You will learn for both finding and tracking down the target.
    • Identifying traps and locks on treasure boxes will also train perception.
    • You may JUGGLE certain items to train perception. Lighter items are easier to JUGGLE.
  • Outdoorsmanship - While it is not essential for a thief, outdoorsmanship is becoming an important gathering skill within the Crafting system and can be easily trained while training perception. Gathering Herbs for remedies with the FORAGE or COLLECT commands is probably the most compelling reason to train outdoorsmanship.
  • First Aid - First aid is used to to stop bleeding from more severe injuries, to remove bolts and arrows from crossbows and bows, and to remove parasites that are found in certain areas. You may also STUDY anatomy charts to train first aid, as well as scholarship.
  • Skinning - Skinning is almost universally trained, as many creatures may be SKINed after they are killed. The rewards may be sold to a tannery like Falken's Tannery, used to create leather goods, carved into bone goods, or other miscellaneous goods like arrowheads. Unfortunately, creatures that you can BACKSTAB often cannot be skinned. It is advised that you vary the creatures you hunt so that neither skill falls behind.

Stealth

Stealth is a big part of being a Thief. Indeed, it is one of the two soft requirements for thieves, the other being Thievery. A soft requirement means that it may still be used as one of the eight survival skills a thief is required to train to circle.

Being stealthy is part of being a Thief and sneaking around town may seem like a grand Thief mannerism, it may add to your character's background, however its not going to train the skill, here are instead some common manners to train:

HIDE will attempt to conceal the character from open view. Characters with sufficient skill in perception compared to your stealth will see you slip into hiding. If they do not notice, they may SEARCH for where you are hiding. STALK will attempt to follow the target, player or creature, while hidden. SNEAK will attempt sneak from room-to-room while avoiding being seen.

However, one learns nothing trying to hide from nothing. At first, trying to be stealthy around other players will be sufficient to train. However, hiding from creatures, especially in combat is one of the most effective ways to training stealth. Following up a successful attempt to slip from a creature's view with with BACKSTAB is the traditional close quarters one-two punch for a thief. Simply attacking from stealth normally will ambush the target and is also very effective in training stealth.

Ranged attacks with a sling, bow, or crossbow may also be performed from stealth by using the POACH command or the SNIPE command if you wish to attempt to remain hidden. However, creatures not at pole or melee range sometimes tend to wander. This can lead to arrows and bolts going missing if they are lodged in the creature.

Perhaps jarring from reality, hiding repetitively and at close quarters during combat isn't problematic. It trains well and can get a Thief out of a pinch. Practice often, and don't forget to repeat.

Locksmithing

Locksmithing is an important skill for thieves and was the basis for the foundation of the Thieves' guild.

This ability lets us get into places others do not want us. The primary use for this skill is opening boxes dropped as loot from creatures. Thieves are hands down the best at opening locked boxes and so are often sought out to open boxes other hunters are not able to open.

Be aware that boxes found on creatures are trapped. You should DISARM them before trying to PICK them with a lockpick. Thieves of sufficient skill may CARVE their own lockpicks from keyblanks. They may also be acquired from some shops, such as Ragge's Locksmithing.

Thievery

Thievery is a hallmark skill for the Thieves guild, and, as such, there it is one of the two soft requirements for thieves, the other being stealth. A soft requirement means that it may still be used as one of the eight survival skills a thief is required to train to circle.

Thievery is currently used to STEAL items and coins. Valid targets to STEAL from are NPCs, items in shops, other players, and the Throne City Museum. The best way to train thievery is to steal from shops. Items that are light and cheap are the easiest to steal. Stealing repetitively from the same target will make it progressively more difficult to steal from that target again. The target will let their guard down again after one hour. You can mark items to see if you are able to steal it.

WARNING!!! Stealing from other players will result in being locked PvP open for 4 hours.

Mark

This is our ability that lets us assess a mark (person or store item) before you make any actions towards them. You are able to learn it within your first couple of circles from the Crossing Guildleader. This is primarily used to gauge how difficult an item is to steal, or how difficult a player is to steal from. However it can also give you information concerning how well your abilities will fare overall against a given opponent.

Backstab

Backstab is both a skill and an ability reserved exclusively for Thieves. The purpose of the skill is to make our attacks from hiding more powerful and accurate. There is no hard requirement for this skill to circle, so it is not required to train. However, a successful BACKSTAB is very powerful and greatly enhances a thief's offensive capabilities; backstab is essential to maximizing our effectiveness in combat.

To be used to BACKSTAB, a weapon must weigh under 30 stones, be a small edge weapon, and be a thrusting weapon. It is encouraged for younger Thieves to use the lightest and smallest blade due to it's increased accuracy over the larger and heavier weapons. As you grow in strength and skill, it is easy enough to also grow in blade length and weight until you are using the maximum sized blade to backstab.

Only creatures that stand upright on two legs are valid targets for BACKSTAB. To train this skill on beastial opponants you must target your attack to a body part (the chest seems to be the easiest to hit and the head the hardest) this is done by using the command (attack move) (body part), IE: jab chest, thrust abdomen, etc.

Also, thieves can still train backstab by using the thief ambushes on any creature. This will also train the debilitation skill. Using the thief ambushes will use some concentration and may interfere with using khris if the concentration pool is drained completely.

Note that, while simply attacking from hiding will ambush the target, it will not train the backstab skill.

Lore Skills

You will be required to train three skills of your choice from the Lore skillset. Appraisal, Tactics, and either Scholarship or a craft is a good choice.

Thieves are, for now, the only ones able to carve lockpicks and make Poison. Eventually, these will utilize the tinkering and poison disciplines.

Thieves receive two free carving techniques and will receive one free reactant techniques when they become available.

Supernatural Skills [Magic]

As Thieves, we do not make use of magic, per se, and so only use half the supernatural skills, also known as magic to others: Inner Magic, augmentation, utility, and debilitation.

You will also train Inner Magic while training any of the other Supernatural skills. Khris that enhance your skills or attributes use the augmentation skill, while those that provide some other benefit use the utility skill. Thieves can also project a presence so powerful to affect creatures in combat and debilitate them. However, we are rather limited in this regard compared to other guilds.

Fortunately, we are also able to debilitate enemies with some special ambush maneuvers, the first of which being ambush choke.

Khri

Khri are our main abilities that we use and tie directly into our "magic" as a guild. They are fueled by our concentration pool and require no preparation to start, unlike spells. You are able to learn your first khri at circle 1 which will be Khri Focus once you find your way into the guild.

Khri use the Supernatural skillset to determine if you can even start them and how powerful they will be once you can. Khri that use the Debilitation skill are only useful when engaged with an enemy.

The Debilitation skill can only be trained in combat against critters of close to equal stats. Debilitation learning is based on the comparison of stats between you and the target instead of the skill it's self. This means various abilities will train differently depending on their stat contest and how you have trained your stats, so try different ambushes and khri to find the one that teaches best for you in different hunting grounds.

For more information see Khri.

Ambushes

Thief ambushes are part magic and part combat. They train the Debilitation skill and, to a minor degree, the Backstab skill. While some are not damaging, they can offer you a significant advantage over your opponent during combat.

Combat

Beyond being a master survivalist, Thieves are also skilled fighters. Because of this, the guild requires that you keep up with not only weapon skills but also armor skills as well. The choice of what weapon and armor to use are purely yours to make, however this guide will give you a little advice in what to choose and how those choices will impact your advancement later on.

Armor Skills

Thieves are required to train only one of the armor skills, the choice of which is up to you. It is, however, recommended that you also use a shield because a number of attacks are easier to block than they are to dodge.

The typical armor choice for Thieves is using some kind of Light Armor since it has the lowest stealth hindrance. It is also common to mix armor types to train multiple armor skills. Using chain as a secondary armor type will not raise your stealth hindrance much if you make the pieces smaller covering items like hand and head protection.

Two popular choices of Light Armor are cloth and leather. Both have benefits and drawbacks, Cloth being lighter and less hindering while Leather is more protective and readily available from a number of shops. When just starting, it's recommended that you seriously consider cloth armor solutions as they will grant you more freedom of movement and less hindrance on your stealth abilities. The lesser weight of cloth is also promotional towards having a lower burden overall which means more opportunity to carry loot (boxes, gems, skins, coin) without being weighed down.

Weapons

As a member of the Thieves' Guild, you will be required to learn the use of at least two weapon classes in addition to the Parry skill. In order to facilitate that parry learning, it is encouraged that one of your weapon choices be something that you can use at melee with an opponent.

In order to make full use of our abilities later on, it is also encouraged (but not required) for you to practice use of either a Bow, or Crossbow. With sufficient skill, a thief will not require extra time to load a sling, bow, or crossbow while hidden as members of other guilds do. In addition, thieves may also snipe at targets while attempting to remain hidden.

In addition, it is recommended to train Small Edged for use with backstabbing, Light Thrown to improve your use of the ambushes that use dirt, and to take advantage of the reduced skill needed to throw multiple throwing blades, and Brawling to improve your use of Ambush Clout.

Snipe

Upon achieving your 40th circle within the guild, you will be allowed to learn the Snipe ability from Guildmaster in Crossings. This ability will allow you to fire an aimable ranged weapon from hiding with a chance to remain hidden.

It needs to be mentioned that there is strict policy on using Snipe, and the ability can be taken away if the GMs feel it is being abused.

For more information see Snipe.

Other Information

Reputation

Reputation is how well the guild feels about you.

Some Thieves confuse Reputation and Confidence. It is important to realize they are two separate things and are not intertwined.

Keeping your reputation solid allows you access to Thief areas and certain Thief abilities.

Allowing your reputation to go too low can result in the guild acting against you, even resulting in your character's death.

Confidence

Confidence is how well you see yourself.

The verb SMIRK SELF or SMIRK while in hiding will access how you feel about yourself, it will also advise if you are in an urban bonus area.

Currently it seems the only manner to improve your confidence is backstabbing.

Confidence can help you with thiefly endeavors: locksmithing, being stealthy, backstabbing, and the like.

Urban Bonus

Rooms within DragonRealms are either urban, neutral, or wilderness. Thieves thrive within the city walls, so we have a bonus to our non-combat survival skills while we are within an urban area. This is checked with using SMIRK SELF or SMIRK while in hiding. This will stack with our confidence bonus to provide a bigger bonus when both are in the positive, but having a bad confidence level along with being in the wilderness will stack against you to the point of you failing even the simplest of tasks.

Passages

The guild has hidden passages across the cities of the realms that provides us with a safe haven when the heat gets to be too much, and to make it easier to move in and out of the guilds to other areas of the cities. This ability is learned very early in your career and can make crossing the Segoltha River to the south of Crossing much quicker.

Contacts

The Thieves guild has various contacts spread out across all the major cities that have town walls protecting them. When looking for other players they will only look within the walls of the city you are in at first. Later you will be able to search distant cities for other players.

When you call on one of these shady people for an errand, make sure you have some coins in your pocket to pay them with, since they don't work for free. The price of their services vary depending on the task you ask of them, and how much attention you have drawn from the authorities within that province. The more heat (warrants and how recently you have been caught committing a crime) you have on you the higher their fee is.

Slips

While most abilities can be learned from a Guildmaster or are granted upon reaching a specific circle within the guild, the use of slips is not. Achieving access to the slip abilities must be taught to you from either a fellow Thief or another who has access to them. Slips do not grant any sort of edge when training, but can offer the Thief who knows them a little bit of versatility when using them while hiding. These abilities automatically grow with you as you gain more circles and Thieves are able to perform the first at 10 circles.

For more information see Slip.

Signs

Thieves have a special language, which can be learned at a fairly early stage within a Thief's career. There is an expert in this language within the Thieves' Guild that could be sought out to teach a Thief. It is not taught by other player characters, and is gives no advantages in skills or stats. It can however add to characters' ability to immerse themselves into the Thieves' guild.

Voice Throw

Voice throw is an ability that can be learned from a guilded Bard. That is any player run Bard. Not a disguised Thief who seems to be a Bard but a Bard. It is an ability learned a good deal within the career of a Thief. A neat ability, and something to push for through the earlier stages of training if the ability interests you. Keeping with the character of the Thieves' Guild. Overtly seeking a teacher of this discipline is frowned upon by the Guild, and will likely out yourself and draw unwanted attention to the guild.

Poison Resistance

Poison Resistance is an ability learned by the same Master of Poisons, that teaches you about poisons, though you'll have to earn more trust then the trust needed to learn about Poisons. It is a helpful ability, and once you have it it will work on its own to defend your character against threats of poisons. Please remember this does NOT make you poison proof, you can be wounded by poisons, and some poisons can even kill you with this ability.

Pretend Guild

Pretending to be another Guild is strictly a RolePlaying choice, it's not required from any Thief. It's simply a perk that we get to use in order to conceal our actual guild affiliation. Bear in mind that the overall desires of the Thieves Guild is that we not bring too much attention/heat down on the guild as a whole, and a proper use of the Pretend Guild system will help you keep to the guild's desires.

Role Playing a Thief

The Thieves' Guild is not the easiest guild to be part of (but all guilds have their challenges and DragonRealms is a game of building a Story through being challenged), it offers many options for running a character within DragonRealms. It may very well be a great fit for you.

The guild itself has a number of nuances which make it unique among all the other guilds within the game, as well as some very serious penalties if you decide to go against the general wishes of the leadership. The support of other Thieves can really assist you with learning the ropes and making some large steps in advancement within the guild. However, it is totally possible to go "lone wolf" and strike out on your own without any support at all.

The guildhall in Crossings has a lovely library where you can read up on some Thiefly things, something that is highly suggested by many of the guild members. Or, you can click the following links to read them here:

BkkKM1 Kalag's Memoirs v. 1
BkkKM2 Kalag's Memoirs v. 2
FtdDTC Dark Thief of the Crossing
IbbST Becoming a Thief
IscSGA A Shaydee Guide to Alchemy
BxxAS Ambika's Story

Closing Statements

Finding your community and additional IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) help is much more easier now. You can join the DR Discord at any time and secure an invite to a Thief Discord or you can find any of the following characters below that have volunteered their time to assisting new and returning characters:

Volunteers may sign up or remove their names at will.
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