I've recently taken another crack at assassins. I'm always pretty good with them up to about level 30 before I start getting reckless and wasting lots of con. I've only had an assassin reach 35 once, and shortly after, RL circumstances dictated a prolonged hiatus from CF and so I just deleted him (or he poofed. I can't remember.) Anyway, as a result I have very little experience from that point on.

At the moment, there are two aspects I'm wondering about, with several questions in each.

1.) poison darts. Just how useful are they? The last assassin I had at 35 spent a lot of time practicing them during some boring times online, but then never got any practical use out of them. Sleep, confusion, acid. Confusion seems pretty self-explanitory, since I was around before Entropy went away, and I remember the confusion effect (also experienced in other ways since then). But what about sleep, and acid? Sleep darts never seemed to put anyone to sleep. And acid I never did figure out what it did, other than some very minor damage; just seemed like a huge waste of time.

2.) stalk + assassinate I've heard a lot of varying information on this. When stalking your victim, if you pop into view for just a moment as you drink water, etc... does it mess up your stalking? If so, how much? Is it just that one stalking session, or does it reach back into previous stalking sessions too? How many stalks should you try for before attempting the assassination? Is it possible to over-stalk (some people have said "more than 5 or 6 stalks and you start to lose effectiveness), or can you stalk indefinitely, progressively increasing your chances until it's almost a garentee? (I realize that RNG and skill percentage come into play as well.) If you leave the area your victim is in, for just a moment (between stalking sessions maybe) because you have to drink/eat/answer cabal-mates bugging you, does THAT ruin your stalking? How long does stalking success last in absence of your victim (i.e. no longer in the same area)?


I think that about covers it. That's more than I thought I would be asking about when I started writing to this, but the more I wrote, the more questions from the past came back to me.

Ok, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong here. I've tried quite a few times to assassinate people, but I always get a complete miss. I stalk upwards of 5 times (6-12) and never step out once in the same area during that time. If I have to eat/drink, I wait until the current stalk is finished, step outside the area and eat/drink in a single "stepping out", then go back into the area and resume stalking. I've even tried a 6 stalk assassinate while the person was sleeping, at night, in a closed in space, and STILL got a total miss. I had the same problem a few years ago with the only other assassin I've had that reached lvl 35. So what am I doing wrong? It makes me want to give up on bothering with assassinate altogether.

Even if you do everything right, there's still a large chance of complete failure -- especially starting out.

That said, you might consider your choice of weapon. For example, giants resist normal weapon damage (slashing/piercing/crushing) and trying to assassinate them with that type of weapon is going to fail a lot more than normal.

So on average, how long does it take to gain your first success, doing everything right? Obviously it's going to be highly variable, but on average?

>1.) poison darts. Just how useful are they?

I've never found them very useful. Sleep darts are useful while ranking, since they confer a sort of slowing effect. You can also use them on cabal outers if you really need to kill it as quickly as possible. I'm semi-sure that the outer doesn't say anything on cb when you dart him. You can also use them on someone you've strangled. Though...I've never found the "strangle and dust/darts" to be a very effective tactic.

Anyway...I'd practice darts, but I wouldn't spend a lot of time spamming them or anything. There is a semi-useful edge you can get, though, that I think is tied to poison darts skill. Useful if you fight invokers at least.

>When stalking your victim, if you pop
>into view for just a moment as you drink water, etc... does it
>mess up your stalking?

There's a lot of guesswork out there. According to some recent nepenthe posts, it sounds like there's no penalty for momentarily stepping out as long as the target doesn't see you.

>How many stalks should you try for before
>attempting the assassination?

Depends somewhat on your assassinate skill. It seems like assassins with perfected assassinate get into the "reasonable success rate" territory after 3-4 stalks. For assassins whose assassinate isn't perfected or close to perfected...which is most assassins....I'd say try for at least six. I don't have any "hard data" to back up that number.

>How long does stalking success last in
>absence of your victim (i.e. no longer in the same area)?

It lasts for a while. Though, I've never been sure if you slowly "lose" stalks, or if they all disappear "at once". Just thinking about how I would code stalking, I'm leaning towards the former.

Poison darts are a nice utility tool. Sleep darts will never put anyone to sleep, but they're still incredibly good -- play around with them a bit. Acidic can cause ongoing acid damage.

Generally, you should avoid letting your intended victim see you while stalking. It is not possible to over-stalk, except in the sense that you may be wasting your time continuing to stalk a guy who will never leave his guild before quitting off. That being said, at some point continuing to stalk stops helping you.