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Thread: Have anybody played a succesful thief?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
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    Default Have anybody played a succesful thief?

    In my recent attempts of a special ending (many months w/o touching adom and then i get hooked again) I found several "known truths" to be kinda faulty, at least for my playstyle.

    First... necromancers are just hard to keep alive in the early game if you try to play it as a necromancer... lol. With TH it's fairly easy to get enough castings from spellbooks to play it as a wizard. And necros are even easier to keep alive since they normally get a little more toughness than wizards.

    And then... i never found any worthwhile mentions about thiefs in the GB or in the forums, seem like nobody plays the class. Well, i do.... i try at least. And in my opinion this is the hardest melee class to play, and not just in the early game.

    Having the ability to stun on critical hits by lvl 30, you assume that the thief is going to play much like an assassin. Therefore, find weakness becomes a *must* if you want to make you char a little less useless. Don't get me wrong, i like thieves, it's very stylish to disarm every door trap you find early on. But they adom is not a "stealth" game. The skill is very useful, especially w/ stealthy talent, i found that it's like having 50% invisibility if you dont run around like a madman, lots of oportunities for backstabbing.

    Well, but thieves don't have the assassin skillset to play like one. If you want (and you do) find weakness you gotta play an orc or dark elf. And orcs are just boring! Lol.... then you are stuck with dark elf, wich sucks memorably for early on melee. Also, you don't get the all mighty dodge skill, another favourite of mine (and another reason why i mantain that assassins are the greatest kill machines of all melee characters), lowering your survivability.

    So my question is.... has anyone found a way to keep thieves going for a long time? because they never really improve except for stats (they also don't get archery, another awesome assassin trait). You get to use pickpocket virtually on anything from the very start, and you get better items from it at lvl 40, but in the end its just just a luck based character isn't it? I think a bard just sucks a little more in melee, but they have companions. A mindcrafter can safely kill goblins orcs and such until lvl 6 when they get mind blast, wich is very useful, and they still have virtually unlimited acess to confusion attacks wich helps everyone escape from anything. In the end...apart from merchants and farmers (maybe, never played those) the thief is just plain weak. Even gettin the penetration dagger from heir, they still are too fragile to be pushed towards meleeing all the time (although they can cast a little like assassins, and that really helps, bot not until you have good literacy, wich can be a hassle). At lvl 50 having intrisic invisibility when adjacent to walls seems a little crappy since most of the things you want to be careful about will be able to see you nomatter what, although it is a given that it is by far not the worst lvl 50 ability.

    Maybe to play a sucessful thief you just gotta be extra careful...all the time, and i just can't do that =P.

    A long time ago, when i first started playing adom (and roguelikes) and didn't adapt to the whole...you got killed, LOLZ! thing... i used to save-scum. And i got a thief to like lvl 42 or something, although my luck was just in the toilet because of constant retries, i remember that it was just powerless agains many of the more dangerous foes you find in CoC 40+. It seems that you always have to run from things....always. And then i ask myself if it is even remotely possible to kill andor with a thief...

  2. #2
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    I can see your points, and they are all the reasons why I never bothered with the class - though I probably will in the future for a challenge. I think the much maligned Farmer class is much stronger than thieves, as at least farmers become quite powerful once you get through the early game (especially DElven ones). Seems to me a thief would have a hard game from beginning to end when compared to the other classes (save merchant)

    That said I'm sure many people have been successful with them, as mid-late game most any character will have herbed-up stats and will be soaring through most basic opposition while despatching any big ugly guys with slaying ammo.
    Suddenly a stream of acid pours down from the ceiling! The cute dog is horribly mutilated by the acidic fluids! The cute dog dies!

  3. #3
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    From what I've read here, thieves are generally considered one of the worst classes in ADOM. I'd even go so far as to say that definitely farmers and possibly merchants are better than thieves: farmers get archery, fletchery, herbalism to start, plus enough herb seeds and decent gardening that you can get a good herb garden going at level 4-6. From there, the push to the mid-game is pretty easy. Even merchants, who have pretty lousy fighting skills, get guaranteed literacy and herbalism, plus detect item status, gemology, and alchemy, which are all decent. Merchant's class powers are miserably bad though, but they also find a lot more shops.

    By comparison, pretty much every skill thieves get can be found/purchased in-game, except for alertness, which is certainly good, but not enough to overcome their deficiencies. Thieves have okay class powers--auto-search is handy, so is speed and stunning criticals. Better items pickpocketed, I believe just means you almost never get the "The foo doesn't have anything" message... or maybe items are blessed or something--everyone can steal fantastic items, including RoDS, AoLS, and a few artifacts--so it's not that great. In the early game, I'd recommend taking the thief Heir gift--adamantium dagger of penetration is pretty awesome for almost the entire game. Don't worry about treasure hunter, really, because you'll be stealing all those extra waters and scrolls of identify that you might want. Assassins are better in almost every way though...

    Necromancers (and pretty much all cure casters: priests, druids, elementalists, wizards) are generally considered pretty easy, as far as I know.
    Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.

  4. #4
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    My first (and to this date, only) ultra was with a thief. I did buff him by choosing Orc for Find Weakness, however.

    Their class defining moment comes at level 32, when they start pick pocketing better stuff. Believe me, it works in spades. PoGA, PoCC, RoDS, SoCR...anything useful under 10s is fair game, and pretty damned common, if you are diligent enough to PP a lot.
    The door suddenly falls in your direction! You are not nimble enough to evade the door. Your anvil is crunched!

    http://kandrewsmith.blogspot.com

  5. #5
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    Yeah, they're a bloody weak class. But find some morgia early on and they're okay (same for any class though). Helps to be Candle born, and getting the heir gift is very nice too. Orcs are probably the best thieves for their find weakness, though the aging worries aren't so nice.
    Platinum Edition ADOMer
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  6. #6
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    I have 3 thief wins so far: normal endings with high elf and hurthling thieves and UNE with drakeling thief.
    Just find a humanoid slaying weapon (skullcrusher or serpent's bite for example) and you will get criticals on every hit against humanoids... That's where it gets really fun.

  7. #7
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    The class powers are pretty good, with the exception of the one at level 18. The 32 class power is awesome, it just improves pickpocketing to a new level, with lots of POGAs, RoDS, etc. As commented above, to take full advantage of the level 24 class power a humanoid slaying weapon is required, then its amazing class powe. Extra speed is handy at level 40.

    I personally don't like orcs as thiefs... sure find weakness is great while you dont find a humanoid slaying weapon, but the others skills are backstabbing (thieves already have), mining (not great without gemology), metalurgy(useless). So the ork skillset is *horrible* for a class which starves for good skills. Orcs are great mindcrafters, fighters types and merchants but not thiefs, at least is my opinion.

    I like gnomes (ventriloquism, gemology, mining) and hurtlings(food preservation,archery) for the class, specially since they get an extra talent to go for heir.

  8. #8
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    I like thieves (and farmers, dammit). Have one regular win (human) and one ultra (GE). The trick to keeping them alive early IMO is to start them as missile characters (note the high dex). You have a fairly high chance of getting a humanoid slayer at some point, after which melee becomes a joke. I think I posted on here once about meleeing a GM threat room to death with a thief.

  9. #9

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    I got my first ever ultra with a high-elven thief. That was a lucky game, though. A poisonous spear found on VD:2 made beginning a little easier. Used polearms from there on and got it to grand mastery with no effort at all. Also three wishes and most of the desirable artifacts (BoW, Preserver, RoI, Protector, Ironfist). I don't consider thieves all that difficult in general. The high-elven one even became a good spell caster. Really, no concentration skill, but the guy still learned ice ball and owned the ToEF with it...

  10. #10
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    a rather "scummy" tactic for every weak melee char is to get raven and get lvl 16 as fast as possible in the id. The rune-covered trident is absolutely fantastic at that early on and thieves level up pretty fast. The absence of swimming is no problem since there is a sure way to get a wand of tele.

    Thieves class skills are good and the "confuses humanoids" is probably top 5 class skills in the entire game.

    Farmers are fantastic melee chars if orc is chosen. They start with backstabbing, find weakness and archery. Add the double carrying capasity and eat yourself to 24 str and they're pretty good, atleast in hoarding huge amounts of stuff

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