Thiefies, aka Rogues
By Watcher
Thieves are downtrodden and tend to be rejected from the mainstream. For this reason they have many "thief only" Guild Halls throught the lands of Drakkar. The first encounter to such a guild hall is in Volcano Town. The easiest way to get to the VT Thief guild is to go up the invisible stairs in the Steel Flower just southwest of the thief trainer.
Here, you will find many delights.
Rolling a Thief:
Get maximum Strength, Charisma, Willpower and if possible reasonably high Luck. The other statistics can be fixed through potions.
Agility is the mainstay statistic for thieves, but don't worry about it right away as agility potions are easy to obtain. Also there are agility adds in the game, such as cloaks, rings and etc. Your goal for agility is to make it as high as possible. Agility adds will significantly increase your ability to hide well.
Cloaks: BNRs (Maeling -3) and the Camoflauge Cloak (Alerian) give agility adds of +2. The Martial Artist Slith Robe also gives agility adds, so keep this in mind if you plan on making your thief one of your main slots. You can reserve a slot as a martial artist and retrieve a Slith Robe with your MA as time and opportunity permits.
Rings: +1 agility to +3 agility. Common to very rare. I recommend finding a 3/3 ring for starters and then head to aleria as you get bigger and pick up the random 0/6 ring. Wear one defense ring if you are in a tough place. There are also energy shield rings on King Mino Dungeon Levels -4 and -5. However, unless you have a big friend, I wouldn't worry about getting these for awhile.
Thieves are easily combat stunned and need to wear the iron hitpoint helm. Better classes of armor will help reduces the chances of getting stunned and protect you if you are stunned.
Methodology:
For the first few levels, go to -1 Nork and steal until about skill 9 or 10. Then you can go deeper into the dungeon. At skill 8 you will be able to backstab, but might be somewhat frustrated as you will get many failed hides. At skill 10, you get the ability to mug, which is a thief only ability and can be fun. Try doing some orcs on -1 through -3 and you will notice that mug often kills them while taking their loot. :)
About skill 11, you can go to Aleria and steal from the townies. To get the townies stationary and on your hex, mug them first. Steal from them until you have retrieved a nugget of copper, silver or gold. Save these nuggets as you will be able to trade them into Tolo for gold. After you have stolen the rocks/nuggets, kill the townie NPC with poison, so new ones will regenerate. You can do this until skill 13. Yes, it is boring, but the skill is quite nice. Steal after you mug, you don't want to kill the townies until you have emptied their sacks. You may want to bring a shield with you because if your MA skill isn't very high, you will get hit often.
Stealing Macros:
My two favorite macros are: Drop Left;Steal from (leave a space after from) and Drop right;steal from (leave a space after from). Use the Macro Editor and use a new macro. I call mine dleft and dright, but call them anything you wish. Use Autoreturn and then enter okay. I used these macros frequently when building thief skill. My favorite method in Aleria was holding banditlord sword in right or left and stealing.
You can gain skill quite nicely with mugging from skill 11 to 15 in Nork. My recommendations is to lure creatures on -4 into a room then mug the first creature on your hex. After you empty its sack, you will need to kill it, so you don't run into an empty sack on your return trip. The fireball twigs are nice to wipe out a zoo on your hex and available in the SF. I found it to be faster to kill a group than individual, after all, we are talking about building thief skill, not weapon skill. Need to keep focused. :)
If you do leave the creatures alive, drag the loot from your hands and leave it on the ground for other players. It's not really good game etiquette to leave a bunch of creatures with empty sacks. Players seem to get annoyed with that. MA Skill:
I would recommend some level of MA skill with your thief. It helps when you are stealing not to get hit. Also, in some dungeons, you will find your hiding ability is not quite good enough to sneak across with a weapon in your hand and you might want some sort of defense when you do make such a trek.
An easy way to make thief skill with a thief and build thief skill is to hold gauntlets in your right hand and backstab critters. You will split the skill between thievery and MA skill. You won't hit as hard as you would with the gauntlets on, but it's a novel way to get MA and thief skill.
Traps:
There are many different kinds of traps available in thief guilds. These traps vary in price and get stronger as you get bigger. My personal favorite for Nork was the icestorm trap. They were cheap and a lot of the small creatures in Nork are susceptible to ice damage. You will get a certain amount of experience as each trap is tripped. I don't believe they have fixed the traps where you get the experience from mulitple kills, but maybe someday. :)
I would not recommend using disintegrate traps unless you just have to. Disintegrate traps are very powerful and you will most likely end up killing yourself with them You can get very crafty with traps. My favorite technique was to set up a series of EC traps. Set them in a a straight line. Go to the top trap and reveal (break hide) When the creatures see you they will come running to you, as they do run towards the line of traps until you reach the last one (step to the side if you don't have ec prots on.) For a lot of creatures, most all will be dead or near dead by the time the reach the last trap. This is how I bagged the horrible, stunning flies in Cobrahn. :)
Caution about traps: Never put them in doorways, in town, in guild halls or in highly travelled areas that players use. You could get called on the carpet by the Sysops for abusive play.
Trap Terminology:
Trap (Direction) Typing Trap N, will set your trap 1 hex North of you. Trap SW will set your trap 1 hex south of you. Typing Trap will set the trap on your hex.
Trap Wearing or NotWearing: I never used this much as it is too time consuming and not worth the effort to type it Trap Carrying or Not Carrying: Works pretty much in the same way as Trap Wearing/Notwearing. However, I never bothered much with it. A novel ideal, but it has very limited uses.
To disarm a trap, step on the hex or use a direction and type Disarm Trap or Disaarm E (whatever the direction may be.) You can only disarm traps a few times and reuse them before they will break.
You can gain experience and skill from traps as long as you remain in the same segment where you set the traps. However, be warned that Sysops and Players get annoyed when unattended traps are left about. It's strictly legal to do so in the game and you can leisurely sit in thief guild while your traps are being tripped, but it is not recommended and the Sysops may at their whim decide you can collect experience from jail (g).
Backstabbing:
Backstabbing may be one of the hardest hitting attacks among fighter types. The problem most thieves have is getting blocked or failing to kill in one shot the critter they are attacking and get zooed after a backstab. In many places, a lot of creatures are darkblind, use this to your advantage. Choice of weapon is strictly up to the thief and how he/she wants to envision it in its playing style. There are no wrong weapons to use in backstab, some just hit with more frequency and harder than others.
Thief Disciplines:
The Thief Guild Trainers stole all Thief Disciplines from Healer and Mentalist Trainers. They even created one of their own (trapsack.) These disciplines are not as powerful as the pure disciplines as the thief does not naturally carry the attributes of the healer or the mentalist to make them work at their maximum potential. However, there are ways to increase their power.
The only way I know of is to find a device that will give you at least 20 eps points. You will need to find a muzi or an uzi, so you can get proper eps point regeneration (or in Cobrahn, wear a lori robe. Whittle a creature down with backstab, fireball twigs or the instrument of choice, then kill them with your poison discipline. It's frustrating and slow as a lot of creatures will die to poison, but it is effective in building simultaneously, your healer and mentalist skill.
...Why do this you say? The main reason is the higher your mentalist/healer skill is the more powerful and longer lasting your thief disciplines are. Let's say you are really getting tired of how short the reveal disc lasts. You build up your healer/mentalist skill up quite a bit (beyond 10 skill) and you will get a dramatic increase on how long this discipline lasts. Your transmute will also pop for a lot more. Here's the downside: You must wear the eps device I previously mentioned and have enough eps to form these disciplines. Unfortunately, this is most likely to occur in Cobrahn wear certain devices are readily available. It's a time consuming exercise, but pays off in the long run with most satisfactory results.
This guide meant for smaller thieves. By smaller thieves I mean below skill 20. There are other things to learn as you get bigger, but you will figure them out by then. :)
Good luck and don't steal from players (g).