Hello all. I've been thinking about the idea of trying a dungeon thief. I don't mean a PVP thief ... I mean a PVM thief (maybe even with lockpicking). Just curious, has anyone tried strictly stealing from monsters? If so, are there any suggested templates and tactics?
Tried a bit of it a couple days ago on a traditional thief. The problem is that using steal breaks hide and the mob will prevent a re-hide. Drive-by can kind of work if you get the latency timing down, though you will be hit by the mob so your build should be prepared for that. Haven't tried it yet, but peace-thief may have potential.
You can cast invis after you steal, and then you'll be able to use your hiding skill then re-stealth. I haven't spent much time doing this, however i can confirm that you can do it relatively safely. Whether or not it's terribly lucrative is another story - I opt to just kill the monsters to get the loot However, disarm dungeon thieves can be pretty fun. I don't have one personally, however you can walk away with some decent slayers sometimes at some of the popular spawns - or at least steal some plat coins from people farming bosses
I'm considering peacemaking .. but I suppose pumping up magery and just throwing out a paralyze field would work too (which would leave me with 100 more points to spend). The problem with a disarm thief, is that I don't really want to wait around for a player to pop by. Sure, the gains can potentially be much greater.
Stealing Snooping Hiding Stealth Magery Mediation Lockpick Enjoy. This can be trained fully afk. Lockpicking stops at 95, do L4s till 100. Stealing from monsters is almost pointless since you can only really find gold most commonly on humanoids. Plus you only steal 1-10 stones of weight, that's not a lot of gold. (you're not gurentee'd 10 stones at 100 stealing) There is no reason to push music+bard skill on a thief, ever. 100 magery lets you gate, hide, enter gate, stealth. Also Arch Cure/Greater Heal. Meditation you'll want for the passive mana regen, it will suck otherwise to run out of mana.
PvM “stealing“ is just... meh. Anyway, if you really have to waste the precious stealing skill like that, then use the double steal method at least. Most monsters shouldnt agro that fast.
I have played a dungeon lockpicker that was fun. GM Hide/Stealth/Lockpick/Music/Peacemake/Anat/Healing. I used him to explore dungeons and unlock chests. Bear in mind I had a support (rescue) mage on another acct. that gated him in and out at start and end points or rescued him. I remember my favorite dungeon diver build.. just a rune to each dungeon in the bank, newby clothes, and store bought night sight potions... me and the wife would recall to the entrance and run through level by level grabbing tossed down items and looting grey mob corpses for trash loot. Take it all back to Britain and run all over E/W selling to npc shops. We made about 100k in one week of casual play... oh the days of full Felucian dungeons.
I think you will find PVM thieving totally pointless unless you're roleplaying and imagining your own little story on your own, possibly together with someone else. Farming-wise you'll get very little of worth. And if that's not important there will be very little excitement involved, as the task wont be challenging at all. Almost at all anyways. I advise you against this abomination of thief skill use and urge you to do the only morally right thing: steal from players! But, of course, it all depends what your goal is. Which is...?
I think you should absolutely go for it. I speak from experience. My dungeon thief character was RP and the tldr of its background was... I worked for Lord British. I reclaimed stolen property from slain heroes and the like who ventured into the anti-virtue dungeons but never got out alive. I enjoyed venturing in handicapped with just newbied starter supplies like, lock picks, a bed roll, etc combined with a stack of kindling, and of course a lantern. Throw on the "dark nights" setting and head in with the idea that I would wander from level to level reclaiming gold from the monsters as well as pick the chests used as stashes by the more intellectual creatures there. All RP aside though I went on a route of all PVM hotspots and cleaned house. If that seems fun to you, I say go for it! If anything else you should do it for the very reason I did.... Piss off the sorts like the ones in this thread that are telling you not to do it.
Instance thieves/stealthers do quite well, ShadowJack was the first person on the shard to ironman all the pirate instances with his thief. You'll miss out on a bunch of loot and possible drops, and you will need a scroll to get in, but it does have certain uses.
Activate steal skill, wait 10 secs, steal and instantly steal again as the skill timer ticked while you had the cursor of the first stealing attempt up. --> double steal without skill delay.
Use Stealing to bring up the targeter and waiting until the skill timer runs out before targeting. The timer starts as soon as you activate the skill, not when you actually steal something. By doing that you can immediately steal again right after you target, allowing you to 'double steal' without waiting in between. This is useful for just about any other skill as well, not just for stealing. I use this all the time on my bard for provo in the event of a failure.
So .. what's everyone's opinion on having magic resist on a thief? Mine currently has GM .. but I'm wondering if it's even worth it, since my main tactic is to run and hide. I just wonder if it's worth being able to occasionally avoid being paralyzed.
