• Thief Essay - Written By Galahad - 03/30/2001

Everyone and their mother has talked about making a mage from the ground up. Now its my turn...KeKe

I suspect many of you have a theif. If you don't -- your missing probably the most fun class of characters to play. Don't take my word for it, just note how many thieves are ALREADY out there. Currently I have 2 thieves on my account. One is a mage thief with hiding (I dropped EI) and the other is a disarm thief.

I am going to go over how to develop the disarm thief in the fastest way possible.

My template is: GM Stealing GM Snooping GM Hiding GM Arms Lore GM Wrestling 80 Anatomy 80 Healing 30 Magery 10 Item ID. 100 str, 100 dex, 25 int.

Now let me defend my position on a few of these stats and skills. First GM stealing is a must. I don't know what type of disarm thief YOU are trying to make, but GM stealing allows you to steal at a 100% rate on most weapons and other 10 stone items. Also you are rarely, and I mean rarely, ever detected. GM snooping goes along the same lines. This is really questionable, but I wouldn't go below 80 or your fails start accumulating. GM Hiding is also great to have so you can hide 8 tiles away from your agressor, even in their line of sight. GM Arms Lore and GM wrestling means you rarely fail at disarming your opponent. There is a chart somewhere in the Thief forum over at stratics on the exact number on different combinations but I feel both skills at GM are necessary (especially wrestling). 80 healing and 80 anatomy are solid enough to give you good heals (around an average of 50 - 60 hps) and at 100 dex and 11 second timer. 30 magery for recalling off scrolls and 10 item id so you don't have to carry around a wand...a lil' less suspicious.

Now off to the actual character creation. Start with 50 healing and 49 hiding and 1 point in whatever you choose (for newbie items...i suggest tracking). Start off in any city. I really don't care because most of the times you can just get a gate to a city. Give your new character 10k. Go buy your skills to max and use the see-saw method to get your stats to 100 str, 100 dex (Arms Lore, Parry is what I used). Now get to Felucca Serpents Hold. This city is amazing. It has a bank, a stable, and a tailor all in 2 screens. Goto the provisioners and buy 5 pouches. Now goto the stable and buy yourself a packy. Now to the tailor and buy as many dye tubs as possible. Your probably will only get 20 or so but that is good for now. Every time you log out just keep buying them and add to the mix.
Now set yourself up a UOA macro (for the love of God get this program ASAP). Hit record and start stealing your dye tubs in your pack horse (make sure you said all guard me or you'll get guard whacked). The macro should look something like this : Say All guard me Use Skill / Cast Spell (stealing) Target (target a dye tub) But repeated a number of times. Now after the target insert a 12000 pause bc stealing takes that long to reset. Re-run this macro each time you get a gain. Everytime you log out...go buy more dye tubs and make another macro for your new dye tubs. At some point you should have around 8 different macros and around 100 dye tubs. That is fine. Just every power hour run the macros through. If you don't get a gain on one of the macros its ok because whenever you get one gain on any tub, you can gain off any other tub again. Keep running this macro until you get to GM stealing. I don't really know how long it takes post UO:R, but its probably around 8 power hours for 50 - 100 stealing with 100 dye tubs.
So now you have 100 stealing. Great. You can't do jack with it until you get the other skills. It really doesn't matter what skills you do in whatever order. But lets do hiding and wrestling first because they are the easiest. Hiding is a simple 8 by 8 method. If you don't know 8 by 8 yet read Gator's essay. Some people say it is easier to GM hiding by using stealth but I find 8 by 8 works just fine. This will take a while so don't get your hopes up. It took me a good 2 weeks to GM. Wrestling is simple...goto the BK wall in Trammel Deceit and work it 3 power hours and now your a 3 time GM. By doing wrestling you will be doing anatomy at the same time. You should get to around 80 anatomy in the same amount of time you do your wrestling, but if not hang out a while and get that 80 anatomy.
Now onto healing...You can 8 by 8 this but I suggest simply healing in normal game play. I really hate this skill. I fuckin' hate it to death for the mere fact it it easier to gain at higher levels than lower ones...well at least for me. To 8 by 8 it, have a friend go on your boat and FS himself. Heal him ... when you get a gain stop go forward 8 times etc etc etc.

So now our character is GM Stealing GM Wrestling GM Hiding 80 Anatomy 80 Healing 40 Magery (hopefully you did this on your own) 10 Item Id (same) Now onto the hell of this character. You should be on your 25th or so day working him (her). Get ready boys and girls. Arms Lore. Arguably the hardest skill in the game to raise simply because you need over 1000 targets to GM it. Yes I said 1000. I don't care where you get your items. Get them and put them somewhere. I used 200 items to get to 85 and from there on you need exponential amounts more. When you get your items (try to organize them) record some UOA macros. Since UOA can only record you targeting around 65 items, you will need at least 15 macro slots. This is the bitch part. You have to manually make these macros (SOMEONE PLZ TELL ME THERE IS AN EASIER WAY). All 1000. Put a pause of 1000 after each target. Once you get them all done (probably 3 or 4 days because of boredom factors) run the macros. If you ever come to a point where you don't gain off any of your macros, go walk around and target vendor goods. Some tips on this. You can set up vendors in your house and block them off upstairs and put 125 daggers on them and target them or you can use NPC clothes...very light and easy to get at brigand camps (Got this info from Crazy Joe...just had to credit the world's greatest thief)...Eventually you should get another gain and from there you can re-run your macros and expect a gain. Rinse and Repeat to GM.

Now snooping. Remember when you could GM snooping in one day...Well those days are gone. Long gone. The fastest way to GM this skill is to get 126 pouches (125 max to hold)...place them in each other...one in each going deeper and deeper levels...and snooping all the way through...You just have to keep doing this. When you don't get a gain going all the way through snoop every person you see and when you get a gain...go back to your bags...You'll need a friend for this and be in felucca. GMing both snooping and arms lore takes a good month, if your lucky.

So there you have it. 2 months of good game-play and you got a kickass thief. Its not the 3 day dexer but I assure you you'll have more fun with this character than with any dexer.