What skills do I need to rank solo as a thief?

Knife is often suggested, but from what I've seen the damage is maybe a round or two of melee and it lags you as well... Am I good if I keep my weight down and pick up shield block when I hit 20?

For gathering up a good set of gear, I suppose I want to make sure my dex, strength, and con are maxed, but where do I go from there? I've noticed there's quite a bit of +hit and +damage gear. How do those stats work and what am I better off going with?

Of gearing too much for damage.

Basically hitroll helps you land hits, especially at low level when armor class could otherwise make you miss.

Damroll helps you hit harder.

As a thief, damroll might not be such a bad idea after all because if you hit someone hard on the first hit, they may well be trying to run after that.

How exactly do the laws of Thera work? My sense is that it's a crime to steal or kill in a PROTECTED city, does this make ranking in those cities somewhat safer? It seems like the ideal setup for a thief since skills like panhandle and edges like urban agility and what not are all geared toward cities...

The laws apply to the four protected cities, which are Galadon, Voralian, Hamsah, and Seantryn.

In terms of terrain, all the protected cities are (for the most part) civilized. Certain skills and edges will only work in civilized areas (or conversely only in the wilderness.)

You can do some ranking in Protected cities, but don't expect to make it very far sticking only to these places.

And "safer" is a very relative term in CF. Expect to be bashed down no matter where you're ranking.

Assuming you're talking about doing it as a Tribunal yourself, Tribunal cabal rules include not killing *anything* in protected areas. (PC criminals aside.)

Thanks, Daevryn. Does killing a wanted PC in a protected city flag you if you're *not* a member of the Tribunal?

Tribs can deputise certain characters for a very limited time.

If you aren't hiding, and they sleep you, in a city they should be able to kill you.

Why? Because they can probably summon you to somewhere you can't move away from.

Having said that, there are lots of places a thief with the acrobatics skill could safely learn.

That's interesting, incognito. I didn't know that. Isn't acrobatics a pickpocket skill? How does that work with ranking?

It works by removing bash from your list of things to worry about.

It is level 33 and requires 44 thief points in pickpockets to get it, the entire path is only 48 points.

One other thing I don't understand is why thieves seem to be so weak against mobs but also often seem to considered strong against players, or at least they seem to emphasized along those lines. Does damage work differently in those two situations?

Mostly, it's about the value or lack thereof of utility abilities.

As a thief, I've killed PCs (effectively, regardless of what actually did the killing damage) by:

- Using hide/sneak to catch them almost dead from another fight and finishing them off
- Lagging them out entirely or almost entirely with trip and cheap shot
- Knocking them out at just the right time for crucial spells to wear out
- Stealing their food and potions, later leaving them starving and out of movement

to give just a few examples out of the wide variety of things you can do with a thief.

None of those things is particularly useful against NPCs. Tiamat doesn't freak out and make a critical mistake because she went for her teleport potion and you'd already stolen it.

Thanks, guys. Does push help with backstab and knife?

Things that are sleeping or resting take more damage on the first attack. This is not the same as the first hit, which means you need to land the attack to get the bonus. I'm not sure if backstab gets as big a bonus, but on knife the difference is definitely noticeable.

AFAIK the bonus is multiplicative. The more you put into that first blow (damage wise) the more you get out.

I'm not sure if different skills have a larger multiplier, but it isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, given the kind of variance you see in initiating damage on sleeping people.

Soloing a thief, tricky with any build but skills you have do depend on the path build you choose.

Hide and Backstab are your bread and butter for soloing, some mobs wont see you hiding if you need to flee and rest. It is much safer to solo where you can hide! You need to dish out damage fast too. If your chosen path doesn't include some sort of damage skill. Choose knife if you have the points. If not choose the kick skill.

I like to hunt mobs near healers that you can barter armors for healing. Also, a strong mercenary can rescued you, and I imagine circle stab could be effective.

Doesn't lag you much at all and gives you that extra damage needed to finish a kill when they're trying to run away.

You can also use it well when you know which way you fled, you can quickly run back in and knife again. Knife, flee, knife, flee can be extremely effective in the right situation.

I've played a couple thieves and would probably always take knife but it's not something that you couldn't live without if you really needed the edge points for a different build plan.

Got a chance to play around with knife. You're absolutely right. It's very fast and very useful. I would consider taking it in any thief build for sure.

There is the odd mob around that can get you disproportionate exp.

If you go scion I could see solo ranking a thief being much more viable.

Heroing a thief solo has been done, but I really really really do not recommend trying it.